Nurturing Technology in Talent Acquisition
How one incubator is aiming to “change hiring as we know it”
Hiring the right person among hundreds or even thousands of applicants is a problem human resource managers struggle with everyday. Talent Tech Labs, a Manhattan-based incubator owned by staffing firm Mitchell Martin Inc., is attempting to solve the challenge by promoting start-ups with technological innovations in talent acquisition.
“Everybody needs to hire. It’s what [companies] focus most of their attention on and so it’s the area that would benefit most from increased efficiency,” said Jonathan F. Kestenbaum, the executive director of Talent Tech.
Inside its one-floor office in Garment District, Talent Tech offers a training and mentorship program to entrepreneurs who are dedicated to introducing better and more efficient technological tools in talent recruitment. It retains a 4% equity stake in return, compared with the industry norm of 6% to 7%.
Unlike bigger incubators such as Y Combinator or TechStars that offer short two- to three-month sessions, Talent Tech requires its start-ups to stay for a minimum of six months. During that time, they receive office space, technical advice and managerial guidance from Talent Tech, and mentorship from seasoned HR professionals working for companies like Amazon, Swiss Commerce and Barclays.
More importantly, they gain an opportunity to show off their inventions to potential investors and buyers. Talent Tech also supplies its start-ups with a ready user base of staffing agencies and Fortune 100 HR departments who will beta test the end products.
Since its inception in 2014, Talent Tech has taken 16 start-ups under its wing. InterviewJet and Majei are two who successfully graduated from the program and are now operating independently.
InterviewJet focuses on narrowing down the candidate pool for employers. Each week, it features up to six prescreened and curated tech engineers with in-demand programming skills. Employers who sign up to its platform will then have 72 hours to connect with the candidates and secure an interview. InterviewJet raised $750,000 from Mitchell Martin to jumpstart its venture.
Majei, on the other hand, concentrates on back-end technology. It created an algorithm-driven program that matches employers and candidates based on a set of criteria, such as personality and skills, much like a dating app. Leveraging Talent Tech’s network of over 50,000 members, it merged with eiTalent, which provides analytical reports on candidate fit using personality indicators like Myers-Briggs.
Kestenbaum believes a massive market is emerging for the kind of services Talent Tech hopes to provide. The talent acquisition industry has witnessed considerable growth over the last five years as the U.S. gradually bounced back from the hiring freeze of the Great Recession. According to IBISWorld, annual revenue from employment and recruiting agencies has been increasing by an average of 5.3% since 2010, and is expected to reach $26.2 billion this year.
Talent Tech recently closed a round of funding with two of the largest talent management companies in the world, Kestenbaum added. He hopes to set up satellite offices in the future, possibly in London and California, and start developing its own solutions.
